McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS Read online

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” Lisa said, “but we don’t understand…” Soft music began to emanate from all around them.

  “Good luck. I’ll see you afterward.”

  Feeling foolish, Mark stood at attention with Lisa beside him for nearly a minute. The music quickly increased in volume and resolved itself as the prelude to Ad Astra, the anthem of the Space Navy. As the final trumpet flourish of the prelude ended and a full orchestra blasted into the melody, the door began to swing open. Beyond lay another vast space with a polished marble floor, except it wasn’t empty.

  Standing on either side of a gleaming center aisle was a double rank of Space Marines, resplendent in their crimson dress uniforms, laser rifles held at ‘present arms’ with millimetric precision, the black stocks contrasting with the white gloved hands that held them. Behind the Marines, drawn up in small phalanxes, were at least one hundred other military personnel of all services and ranks. Standing in the gaps between formations were two gaggles of civilians.

  At the first drum beat, Mark and Lisa stepped off and marched forward toward the gleaming white dais with three marble steps leading to a raised platform. On the platform stood several officers, including half a dozen admirals.

  Somewhere deep within Mark, a small voice chuckled at the anachronism of a starship navy requiring its officers to learn to march. That had been his attitude when he and Lisa attended a three-day military orientation following their induction into the Navy just before departing for Brinks the second time. They learned such things as the hierarchy of command, how to wear the uniform, and most bizarrely, they’d spent a full afternoon on a dusty hop-ball field, learning to march in formation.

  The reason behind the ancient tradition, once used to maneuver masses of men in battle, now became apparent. With each step, Mark felt a new jolt of adrenaline flowing through his veins. The music, the surroundings, the formal nature of the occasion, all combined to generate a surge of pride. Unconsciously, he pulled his shoulders further back and straightened his spine as he concentrated on keeping time to the beat of the music. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted his wife doing likewise.

  As they approached the dais, Mark blinked. The central figure was a black man in the uniform of a full Fleet Admiral with four glittery pips on his shoulders. Although he had never met the man, the rank indicated this was Admiral N’Gomo, Chief of Fleet Operations.

  They reached the foot of the white polished steps and came to a halt just as the music died, stamping the heels of their black boots on the floor as they had been taught to do. Ideally, they should have done it so precisely that a single echo would have sounded through the hall. In truth, there were two closely spaced, but distinct cracks of synleather against marble.

  For long seconds, they just stood there at attention with the assembled brass gazing down on them from on high. Then, Admiral N’Gomo descended the steps with military precision. He pivoted on his right heel, took one step, pivoted again, and stood facing Mark. His expression was grave as he seemed to inspect his subordinate like one looks at a bug under the microviewer.

  After a precise five second pause, Admiral N’Gomo produced a sheet of heavy paper… in fact, it looked like parchment… that he’d had concealed in one hand. It crinkled loudly as he opened it. He held it up and began to read:

  “Attention to Orders!

  “Mark David Rykand, Lieutenant-Commander, Terrestrial Space Navy, Serial Number 27103847. You are hereby commended for gallantry and service to our planet; whereas, you have penetrated enemy space on two occasions. During the first such incursion, made prior to your joining the service, you prevented the escape of an important enemy prisoner, a prisoner who would most certainly have endangered our planet and our species.

  “During the second incursion, you risked life and limb to retrieve data vital to the prosecution of the war effort. Both of these actions are in the highest traditions of the service. They cast glory on you and your ship. You are hereby awarded the Order of Goddard, with Gold Cluster.”

  N’Gomo took one step forward and pinned the medal to Mark’s chest, saying in a softer voice, “Congratulations, Commander. Well done.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Mark replied, hoping his voice was audible over the pounding of his heart in his temples.

  The admiral then stepped backward, pivoted left, took two steps, and then pivoted to face Lisa. He again raised the paper and after the requisite pause, began to read.

  “Lisabeth Arden Rykand, Lieutenant, Terrestrial Space Navy, Serial Number 27103848. You are hereby commended for gallantry and service to our planet. Your efforts have been exemplary and in the highest traditions of the service.

  “Specifically, your exploits prior to joining the Navy in learning the enemy’s tongue have been critical to our war effort. On two separate occasions, you penetrated enemy space, risking life and limb to retrieve data vital to the prosecution of the war effort.

  “Your actions cast glory on you and your ship. You are awarded the Order of Goddard, with Diamond Cluster, and hereby promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander.”

  Admiral N’Gomo stepped forward and pinned the medal on Lisa’s uniform. His stern face suddenly cracked into a smile as he leaned forward and said, “You no longer have to take orders from your husband.”

  “Thank you, Admiral,” Lisa said, trying to suppress a smile. In so doing, she nearly choked up and didn’t get the words out.

  The Admiral took one step backward, pivoted, returned to a position that brought him midway between them. He pivoted on his heel, snapped to attention, and delivered a slow, perfect military salute.

  Lisa and Mark returned the salute.

  When the trio’s hands snapped down to hang at their sides, N’Gomo raised his voice and said, “You may withdraw!”

  The order echoed through the hall. The two of them pivoted in unison, and began marching back the way they had come. They had gone only two steps when the music again swelled around them.

  The door opened at their approach, and they marched through. They had barely cleared the portal when it closed again.

  Renaldi was quickly beside them.

  “Congratulations, and especially you Ma’am, on the promotion. Now that the formalities are over, let’s get you to the party.”

  #

  Chapter Fifteen

  To Mark’s surprise, the lieutenant did not lead them to wherever “the party” was to be held. Instead, he ushered them into a small, well-furnished guest room and suggested that they sit down and relax for a few minutes.

  “What’s going on?” Lisa asked.

  “Logistics, Ma’am. We’ve got to get all of those people from the reception hall to the banquet hall and seated so that you can make your grand entrance. It wouldn’t do to have the guests of honor just standing around while the herd sorts itself out, now would it?”

  “I don’t know why you are going to all of this trouble for us, Lieutenant. We were just doing our jobs…”

  “We’re all doing our jobs, Commander,” Renaldi responded. “Some of us are doing more important jobs than others. Wait here, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” With that, he was gone at the fast clip that seemed to be the only pace at which he moved.

  Mark looked around and noticed the wet bar against one wall. “Drink, Love?”

  “Do you think we ought to?” Lisa asked, hesitantly.

  He shrugged. “We’re the guests of honor. I don’t suppose they would have put us here if they didn’t want us drinking their liquor.”

  “White wine, then, to settle my nerves.”

  “White wine it is.”

  He moved to the bar, found a real glass bottle… no auto-dispensed spirits in this bar… pulled the stopper and filled two crystal goblets two fingers high with golden yellow liquid.

  The room they were in was against one wall of the glass pyramid that was fleet headquarters. It looked out across the Black Forest, which glowed in the light of the moon that was just about to set. The ground w
as thick with snow and the trees bore the same blanket that they had seen out the bubble of the bullet car. Apparently, the whole Lake Constance / Bodensee region had been dusted heavily in white sometime during the past few days.

  They stood side by side, sipping their wine in silence, drinking in the beauty of the night, content to be home once more, when a quiet hissing sound behind them signaled that the door had opened.

  Thinking it was Renaldi, Mark turned to look. It was Admiral N’Gomo, whose skin was almost the same shade as his uniform.

  “Ten’hut!” Mark said as he attempted to twist around to face the Admiral, making a mess of it. He recovered enough to stiffen his back and throw out his chest just as N’Gomo reached them. For a disoriented instant, he frantically searched his brain for the military protocol suitable for getting caught by the brass with a wine glass in one hand.

  Lisa reacted almost as quickly as her husband, but with considerably more grace. After a quick glance over her shoulder, she pivoted gracefully on one heel and snapped to attention.

  “At ease,” the Admiral ordered in a gravelly voice leavened by a barely suppressed chuckle. “This is a social occasion.”

  “Admiral, we didn’t expect you!” Lisa said.

  “Relax, Commander. I told Enrico… that’s my aide, Lieutenant Renaldi… that I would retrieve you. The banquet is just about set up. You will be sitting next to me at the head table to my left,” he said, nodding toward Mark. “And you, my dear, will be on my right.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have you two had a chance to decompress a bit from the whirlwind we put you through today?”

  “No, sir,” Lisa said. “We still can’t believe it. As I told Lieutenant Renaldi, we were just doing our jobs.”

  “Piddle!”

  “Sir?”

  N’Gomo’s expression suddenly turned serious. “Don’t you two know how important you have been to the war effort?”

  “We’ve done our part…” she said, stopping in response to N’Gomo’s raised hand.

  The Admiral continued. “Done your part, young lady? I should say you have. Without you, we wouldn’t even know we were in danger until a Broan battle fleet materialized on the outskirts of the Solar system. Everything we know about the Broa, we have learned through your efforts.”

  He turned to Mark. “As for you, Commander, our whole strategy was your idea.”

  Mark opened his mouth to make his usual objection that a lot of other people had turned his harebrained scheme into a workable strategy. The Admiral stopped him with the same gesture.

  “So you see, you two brought this on yourselves. You’ve both earned promotion and decoration many times over. I just wish we could have shown our appreciation earlier. We waited this long because this is the earliest we could lay our hands on you. Nothing like having the people you want to pin a medal on some seven thousand light-years distant, is there? We couldn’t just call you home for this evening, now could we?”

  “No, sir,” Lisa said. “The Long Jump doesn’t leave a lot of room for commuting.”

  “No it doesn’t. Luckily, we seem about through with that stage of the war. And none too soon. How long will our people at Brinks wait before they send another ship through the gate?”

  Mark blinked, thrown off for a second by the change in topic. Then he answered: “Three months, sir.”

  The admiral nodded. “There’s no way they can possibly know your jump was successful. For all the commanders at Brinks know, you could have ended up in the middle of a sun. So they will try again. Moreover, they will keep trying until they get word that Amethyst or one of the ships to follow reached Earth, correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Since you did, in fact, make it, why don’t we limit the exposure of the ships scheduled to follow you. I propose we get word to them that you are safe, and do it before that next ship jumps.”

  “How, Admiral?” both Rykands asked together. That was another habit they had picked up living in the confines of a single small cabin aboard ship.

  “We haven’t been idle here, either,” N’Gomo replied. “The technologists have completed three stargates based on the data we found in the planetary database. Our gates are bigger than Broan gates, by the way. We were about to haul one out to Asgard and run it through a test jump when we received word of your arrival.

  “Since your gate is focused on the New Eden system I propose we move one of our gates there for the test. We’ll see if we can get a link between the two. If we do, we’ll send through a construction party to erect a second human stargate and we’ll start flowing war materiel through in a big way. Logistics Command indicates that we will eventually need at least six transfer corridors to make the plan viable.”

  Without a break in his delivery, the admiral caught them off guard once more. “Have you any plans now that you are home?”

  “We have thirty days accumulated leave coming,” Mark replied. “We thought we would just tour Earth for awhile.”

  N’Gomo nodded. “A good plan. You know what they say about ‘all work and no play…’” Then his face got serious again. “I know it is an imposition, but we need you to postpone your leave for a couple of months. We have a near-term need for your continued services.”

  “Impose, Admiral?” Lisa asked. Suddenly, the tension she’d exhibited en route was back in full force. Mark doubted the admiral noticed, but he’d lived with this woman too long not to know her body cues.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. The orders will be delivered tomorrow at noon. You, Lisa, will go directly to Vancouver to join the rest of the star gate people. We need your talents to translate the data as your team teaches our home team all they need to know to get the gates operational.”

  “Yes, sir,” she responded, none too enthusiastically.

  If N’Gomo noticed the change in her tone, he showed no sign.

  Mark felt a little dizzy at how fast events were moving… or possibly it was the wine. His next question was pro forma. “Do I go to Vancouver, too, sir?”

  “Not right away. Have you heard of Project Trojan Horse?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Not surprising. We have the project classified so high that I probably shouldn’t know about it. Trojan Horse is our name for the group building the small starships we will be seeding throughout the Sovereignty. It is the reason why we have to get our gate network up and running. If we are to sow confusion among our enemies, we need to get started as soon as possible. I want you in New Mexico, Commander, to give the program a good inspection.”

  “I’m no engineer, sir.”

  “We don’t need more engineers. We’ve got our best people working on the most convincing decoys possible. But none of them have ever been on a Broan world. You have. I want you to look over what they are doing with the eye of a veteran. Check out the design of the ships, their strategy for deployment, everything. Dig down into the minutia. See if there is anything that will give us away, or which might be improved.”

  “For how long?”

  “You be the judge. Take a couple of weeks. After that, spend another week writing your report.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Chief of Operations noticed the tone of resignation and chose to address it. His talent for judging people was one of the major qualifications for his job and he was good at it.

  “You don’t want to be separated from your beautiful lady that long. I don’t blame you. No one says you can’t write the report in Vancouver. After you are done, the two of you can go on that leave we owe you.”

  “Yes, sir!” This time the acknowledgement was enthusiastic.

  The admiral looked at an old fashioned chronometer he wore on a bracelet. “I’ve kept you two talking overlong. Renaldi will have my guts for garters.” Turning to Lisa, he asked, “Care to accompany me to the banquet, Commander?”

  “Delighted, Admiral.”

  N’Gomo held out his arm to her. She took it and let him lead her toward the door, with M
ark bringing up the rear.

  #

  The banquet was everything the Admiral had promised. After a sumptuous meal made even better by its contrast to ship food, they danced until midnight… not with each other. Lisa found a steady stream of handsome young officers vying for the privilege of steering her around the marble floor. Muscles depleted by long living in microgravity began to protest toward the end.

  Mark, too, had an endless supply of dance partners. It seemed that every pretty young fraülein in Meersburg was in attendance.

  Finally, they were deposited in the V.I.P. section of Headquarters and left alone. Despite the fatigue of their travel and of a day already twice as long as normal, after enjoying an orgy of hot water in a communal shower, the two found themselves entwined in a long, languid bout of lovemaking. Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms, feeling an odd combination of satiation and alertness that kept them from falling asleep.

  “So, darling,” Lisa whispered with a giggle, “how was your day?”

  “So so,” he replied, planting a kiss on her forehead, which was the only part his lips could reach, still connected as they were. “Now that it is over, care to tell me what you were so nervous about this morning?”

  She paused a long time before answering: Finally, she said, softly, “It was the speed with which everything was happening, I guess. Amy’s engines didn’t even have time to cool off before we received orders to get our butts dirtside. Then that ensign waylaid us at White Sands and we were on our way here. It was almost like they were intentionally trying to disorient us, not give us time to catch our breath.”

  “So?” he asked. “That’s the Navy way.”

  “That was precisely what I was worried about,” Lisa said, her words becoming more earnest by the second. She buried her face into the valley between his pectorals and biceps. Mark thought he felt dampness in the region of her eyes.

  “I’m still not with you.”

  “Don’t you see?” she asked. “When we were out at Brinks, they had to keep us together. We were so isolated that it made sense for the service to pair us up for companionship. Otherwise, we might have committed suicide, or gone over to the enemy or something…”